Seal with Unicorn and Inscription

Cleveland Museum of Art

Seal with Unicorn and Inscription

Date
c. 2000 BCE
Medium
possibly kaolin
Culture
Pakistan, Indus Valley civilization
Department
Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution
Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID
140095

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Small stone seals, probably used to identify merchandise or property, are among the most numerous objects surviving from the protohistoric urban sites along the banks of the Indus River system. This example has a bovine creature with one horn and one ear showing in profile, his head held over an altar-like object. Animals are the most popular motifs in the visual culture of the Indus Valley Civilization, shown much more often than human figures or cityscapes.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Provenance
?–1964: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art by exchange | 1964–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

  • Representative object from the topic Ancient Egyptian Personal Objects
    Ancient Egyptian Personal Objects

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